Why might you want an Xbox One X for your home theater, what is UHD? Split screen picture-in-picture, choosing the right OLED TV, improving OTA antenna reception, getting a TV with good sound built in, and more of your calls!

Guests

Audience Questions

Audience QuestionsHour 1

Jim wants to get a 4K UHD TV that offers split screen or picture-in-picture support. Scott says most TV manufacturers have dropped that option as TVs have gotten thinner, and other features like HDR have gotten more popular. No TV can really support split screen anymore. Computer monitors can do it. An external device may be able to do it, but that's an additional cost. He should also consider that split screens will clip or crop the image so he wouldn't see the entire screen.

Jim wants to avoid having to use multiple remote controls. Will his cable box remote take over for the TV remote? Scott says it's all in the programming. He'll have to have the right code in there and sometimes it's trial and error to get it right.

Can he also have it control the sound bar? Scott says that could be a challenge. But if any remote can do it all, Scott recommends the Logitech Harmony remote.

Susan wants to buy an LG OLED TV, but they have various models. Which should she buy? Scott says that LG makes the B7, which is the Costco model, C7, which is their budget brand, then the E7, G7 and W7. All those are 2017 models and Scott recommends all of them. He recently reviewed the LG C7, and it's no different from the B7, which is a "captive model" exclusive to Costco.

The good news is that LG has slashed the prices of all their OLEDs by quite a bit. There really is no difference between the B7 and the C7. All of those models use the same OLED screens and the video processing is the same. The only difference would be cosmetic or additional features. The 65" E7 is $4500, and the 55" E7 is $3500. They're not cheap, but if she's in the market, it's a good buy. She should make sure she can control the amount of light in the room, though, as OLED isn't good for a bright room.

Audience QuestionsHour 2

Jeremy is a cord cutter who uses an indoor over the air antenna to get live broadcast television, but he's not getting very good reception. Scott says like any antenna, his reception will depend on where he can put the antenna. The higher the better, and it's best to have it close to a window. Getting an amplified antenna would be a good idea as well. He should try and put it within line of sight of the broadcast transmitter. The chatroom says to use a signal booster too, but Scott says an amplifier will only amplify the noise if it's not within the range of the channel signal.

Scott says he can abandon the antenna entirely and go with live TV streaming. DirecTV Now, SlingTV, Hulu, even YouTube have live streaming TV packages. Of course, that does mean he's back to paying a monthly fee.

Dean would like to have a TV on his wall that he can use as a kind of motion video frame. Scott says any TV will do, and he can just connect it to a Blu-ray player and then have it set to play on a loop. The chatroom says that there's waving American flags on YouTube lasting up to 10 hours that he could play as well. With a Smart TV, he can navigate to YouTube with his TV's browser and play it. Scott says it will pump light into the room, though, and so when watching a movie, he should turn it off.

Adam has an A/V receiver, but it doesn't have HDMI. Can he still use it? Scott says not really, at least not for video. HDMI is the standard connection now in HDTVs, and if it doesn't have it, then he'll need a newer A/V receiver to handle the connection. If it had component, he may be able to get away with it, but it's not likely, and it still wouldn't be digital.

Adam will want to get a model that is future proofed with connections that can pass through 4K UHD signal, because eventually, he'll get one with a 4K source. The sub woofer is also causing things to shake and rattle a lot. Scott recommends putting a pad or carpet underneath it and in front of it to dampen out the vibration.

Tracy just replaced his Pioneer Kuro with an LG B7 OLED TV. Scott says it's a pity he had to, because it was the best TV ever made, but all good things come to an end. Should he calibrate the LG OLED? Scott says he can pay a professional to calibrate his TV, but he can get about 80% of the way by selecting the "Cinema" mode in the settings. He can also get HD Blu-ray DV Essentials to help dial in the settings. Calibrating it perfectly will cost him several hundred dollars, but if he paid thousands for the TV, that could be worth it.

Richard would like to only have one remote control. He has a Harmony 1000, and it almost does the job, but it doesn't have a TV guide that can pop up. Is there a remote that can do that? Or can he use a tablet like an iPad? Scott says he'd have to have something in between that could take the Wi-Fi signal of his iPad and then transfer it into an IR signal.

Dijit is recommended by Gizmodo. iRule is another option. Scott doesn't like a touch screen remote, though. He prefers physical buttons. But sometimes you just need a screen.

Audience QuestionsHour 3

Dan got a new cable box with Spectrum, but after a week he started to get an HDMI error because his connection has been "compromised." Scott says that the first thing to try is to power cycle the cable box. That will reload all the standard default settings. It could also be a faulty cable. So replacing the HDMI cable could solve the issue. Scott also says that being an older TV, the connection could be choking. Or maybe the HDMI connector could be failing.

Scott really thinks that Spectrum made a software change that isn't compatible with his older TV. He should try using the component input. It won't be as good, being an analog connection, but it could be his only solution short of upgrading his TV.

Joe wants to know if backlighting or bias lighting will help combat eye strain while watching TV. Scott says that in a dark room, he'll get a better image, but with HDTVs being brighter, it can cause eye strain. That's why a bias or backlight helps. It shines a light behind the TV onto the wall and it smoothes out the light that your eyes see, so that your eyes aren't working as hard. It has to be a certain shade of white, though — D65. 10% of the peak brightness of the TV. The best place to get a bias light is CinemaQuestinc.com.

Jerry has a laptop and he wants to know if he can connect his Apple TV to it so he can watch movies. Scott says that if the laptop is a Mac, then AirPlay with the AppleTV will make it easy. If it's a Windows laptop, then Miracast is what Windows supports. Both the laptop and TV have to support it, though. If not, then Google Chromecast will work and it's very affordable at $35. Find out how to do this at support.google.com.

Donald has several TVs, and when he watches streaming content, he has to turn up the volume all the way. Scott says that different methods have different audio levels and there's really not much he can do about that.

Dave would like to know if video cards with an HDMI output would allow him to calibrate his TV with his computer. Scott says that HDR calibration is in its infancy and he can get HD test pattern generators. The HD Fury Integral will add HDR meta data to do it. But for the cost, it's better to have a pro do it. Or he could get a test disc like Disney WOW or HD Benchmark. That will get him about 80% of the way.

This Week in Tech News

Sending unsolicited text messages is bad form, and Facebook got caught using their 2 Factor Authentication database to send out ads and other notifications.

Facebook admitted their faux pas and apologized. Leo says that's become the modus operandi of Facebook: move fast and break things, then apologize. In other words, better to ask forgiveness than ask permission.

Samsung has been quite vocal about its plans to build a smartphone with a foldable screen in it, and we could see that next year with the Galaxy Note. On the front it will look like a regular smartphone, but then you'll be able to open it up to a 6 or 7" tablet. That will likely cost a lot more, and Samsung has already said it will be raising the price of the next Galaxy S phone, starting at around $850.

Leo got his Apple HomePod this week and he says it's a device that suffers from an identity crisis. Apple isn't selling it as a home assistant like the Echo or Google Assistant, even though it has Siri on it. It's limited in its ability to play music, though. It's slightly better than the first generation Sonos, but not as good as a bonafide stereo system. It's just an expensive speaker for Apple Music via Airplay. It doesn't even work with Bluetooth. If you're not drinking that Kool-aid, there's no sense in buying one.

Leo says that the Space X Falcon Heavy rocket launch, with two boosters automatically landing afterwards, was a triumph of engineering (even though one crashed in the ocean). The fun part was using Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster as ballast with a mannequin dressed in a spacesuit, playing Bowie's Space Oddity on the stereo. What a great test, and the PR stunt of the century for Tesla, with hundreds of thousands watching the live stream of StarMan orbiting the earth before heading off to Mars. Doesn't get much better than that with PR.

The day before the Super Bowl is the biggest TV buying day of the year — even bigger than Black Friday. That's because it's also the end of the model year and they want to clear out the old models to make room for the new models. Leo says that there are some times you want to wait for the latest and greatest, but right now is not that time. LCD and OLED TVs are still dominant and will be for a few more years until MicroLEDs take hold. So if you were waiting, don't! If you have an HD TV and wonder if you should buy 4K, now is the time because of HDR 4K TVs. They have stunning color and dynamic range. Prices have come down to the point where there's no time like the present.